


An Account of the Events of Kawahimo Island

by Vintar



Category: Mononoke
Genre: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Gen, Murder, Rape/Non-con References, References to Suicide, Youkai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:01:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/pseuds/Vintar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Medicine Seller puts a wrong to rights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Account of the Events of Kawahimo Island

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oxfordRoulette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/gifts).



The case had been as straightforward as such things could be. A girl left her house to meet with a young man who she thought to be kind and generous, only to discover too late that he was neither to her, but both to his friends, waiting in the alley he led her down. In the morning the girl took herself and a kitchen knife and walked a straight line into the woods that backed on to her family's rice-fields. The village tried its best to forget the incident until the bear that had eaten her body, now neither fully carnivore nor carrion, padded down the cobbled main street to the young man's estate and proved to be rather unforgettable.

It ate the young man, and his friends, and still more people besides by the time that the Medicine Seller arrived, scales tipping westwards in his chest. He extracted its reason, truth, and regret like thorns from a paw, soothed its woe, and then cut it to the ground.

Still, no such thing ever went entirely smoothly. The girl had a friend, sister to the young man who had disappeared between the bear's teeth. When the bear came slavering for her, she trembled and stroked the damp, blooded fur of its muzzle even as it took her head in its jaws, carnage on its breath. When it was over she used her bloodied hands to bury the bear's skull in the moss and loam of the forest, and pressed a kiss to the soil.

It was unfortunate. When it came to the supernatural, a sharp cut was cleaner-- love lingered.

She rocked back on her ankles and regarded the ground. Slowly the prickling of the otherworld receded, all the sounds of the world returning. As birds began to sing again, he waited.

"Take me with you," she said.

Her family would eventually begrudge her the loss of their son, he knew, one coming home when another did not. It was a deep-set human quirk, to treat the safety of one precious thing as if a bargain had been struck for another, as if the young man's fate had not been sealed three times over: in the forest facing the bear; in the alley; in the moment when he and his friends had looked at the girl and then to each other, grinning like wolves.

She would grow to find the surface world ill-fitting. But then what?

"No," he said.

She wiped at her small face, blotchy all over with tears and exertion, pale with exhaustion inbetween. "It would be good," she sniffled, wiping at her face. "To help people, I mean. You could show me how. I could make it so things like this don't happen, I could get there first--"

"If you break up birds from fighting, they will shriek at you until you leave, then begin again. It's their nature. You can only keep the cats at bay, or pick up the pieces."

It was a clumsy analogy. She peered at him, too sharp. He cursed himself, but only a little. It had been a tiring day. His hands ached, blood scabbing under his fingernails where the force of keeping his wards up had torn backwards, and there was a familiar odd ill-fitting feeling in his body, as if someone or something else had worn it; the fact that they or it had indeed done so did not make it any more appealing. Excuses, he supposed, never sufficed until you needed them yourself. 

"Have you ever done that?" she asked. "Tried to help people before everything went wrong?"

"Go home," he said, and shouldered his pack. "Mourn, and talk, and love, until you find that you can't."

The walk out of the village was quiet, dawn and mourning casting a blanket over everything. There was something on the air, like distant bells, or the noise in one's ears that one hears when everything else is silent. The scales in his chest made small scratching noises as they aligned themselves, spinning gently on their axes.

Something tugged at him, like a hook.

"I know," he sighed. "There's only so long that one can ignore their mistakes."

The sword rattled in its sheath as if in agreement, but that was a fanciful notion. It was only a sword.

 

The closest point bordering Kawahimo Island was a fishing village, small and unlovely, everything rimed with salt and hunkered down as if against a strong wind. It had changed little in the years since the Medicine Seller visited last, save for the deepening of wrinkles on the faces of the townspeople and for the fat black crows sat on the moorings like impartial observers. The island itself squatted on the horizon, a dark smudge haloed with streaked clouds and cormorants.

There had been a thriving little village on the island the last time that the Medicine Seller had visited. There had been carpenters, net weavers, a few noble families enjoying the relative solitude. There had been traffic bustling back and forth between the two villages. The fishing boats, bristling thick on the waves off the coast, had not been in the habit of leaving a generous space around the island. 

He picked a path all the way along the docks before he found a fisherman willing to row him across the bight, and even then it was only domestic desperation that drove the man to it: after a gift of a tincture made from crushed turtle shells, the man suddenly decided that the trip was not hard, which, by coincidence, was what the tincture was intended to cure.

When the Medicine Seller stepped off of the boat onto the island's dock, his foot broke through the rotted boards.

"Be here tomorrow morning," said the boatsman, and left without a backwards glance, oars chopping slices out of the calm waters.

Weeds grew through cracks in the main street. The sunlight that they reached for hit the ground in strange stripes, blocked out in patchy shapes by burnt-out buildings, half-fallen and hunched over, everything unburnt riddled with rot and salt-damp. Trees had started to encroach the boundary between village and nature, roots rippling up through roads and sending the streets skew-whiff. In the distance, the estate that was perched on a hill as if watching over the village was dark.

When he had visited last there had been birds of all sizes fluttering through the branches and hopping across the ground, and ash-grey monkeys the size of small dogs creeping through the trees that ringed the village. Standing in the main street, all he could hear was the waves washing against the docks and the hollow sound of his sandals against the street.

"I'm sorry," he said to the air, "for taking so long."

With great care, the Medicine Seller placed down his pack and settled himself on the rim of the algae-slick fountain, facing the main square.

"Come," he said, and whistled.

 

Everything was on fire.

Flames snapped across the roofs of the surrounding buildings, harsh against the night sky, but there was little noise from people; the townsfolk had either left or had been what he could only think of as _shut out_ , otherworldly walls coming down. The Medicine Seller turned slowly. A body floated face-down in the fountain, its jade-green sleeves rippling on the water like lilypads. He turned back, and regarded the bodies strewn around, torn like paper.

The Medicine Seller sighed. "This is as good a place as any to start, I suppose."

In the middle of the square stood a man, dark hair flowing down his back and sword drawn. Firelight licked at the swirls of his blade, and the hem of his robe billowed gently in the hot air. It was such a dramatic tableau that the Medicine Seller despaired that the man had failed to recognise what was to come. Dramatic scenes tended to end only in certain ways.

On the other side of the square, something faced him.

It had been so clear, the Medicine Seller remembered. He had stared it down and seen every line of its face, every glaring inch of those fever-bright eyes, lit by fire-light. Now, perched on the fountain, his own eyes failed to grasp it. He could recognise the space that it occupied, but it was like trying to see one's own nose, or the blind spot of the eye, a strange space that the mind reflexively avoided. The ground underneath was ruined, pavers thrown about; nestled inside of the hole, a curve of white bone flickered orange-red in the firelight.

Equidistant to both of them, a young woman stood, twisting her hands in her sleeves and shouting out. He couldn't hear her over the noise of the flames. He wondered if he had ever bothered to try.

The man ran at his opponent, or his opponent ran at the man. Either way, the outcome was the same. The woman threw herself forward to intervene, then slumped in the man's arms, blood spilling from the blade in her heart and blank eyes staring.

As the unseen opponent bounded away through the burning streets and the man stared at the body in his arms, the Medicine Seller stood, brushing ash from the seat of his robe. "You were such a fool," he said to the scene in front of him, shaking his head.

He walked out of the square, leaving the young man to do what he would. Leave the island in the morning as the remaining villagers looked at him accusingly, put the incident behind him, try to pretend against all evidence that it had not happened. As the Medicine Seller stepped over the threshold, he raised one foot neatly out from the billowing cinders and flames of the evening, and placed it down into a clear, sunny morning.

The young man from the scene in the square, sword sheathed and face keen, was walking alongside him down the road. Assorted villagers milled around them in various states of agitation: the mayor, his wife, the grizzled carpenter, the young female heir to the rich estate of the island, visible at the far end of the straight road. In the bright light the Medicine Seller could see the swirls of cosmetics on the young man's face, whirled into careful shapes along his cheekbones. He had to fight the urge to tell the man how unflattering he'd eventually discover them to be.

"Of course that business with the murder was upsetting to all of us," the Medicine Seller heard the mayor's wife say. The bright green of her kimono was vivid in the sunlight as she fluttered her hands. "But it happens. This sort of thing is to be occasionally expected when men drink."

"I suspect that there was more than that at play with the man's death." The young man's smile was nothing but excited, thrilled at the prospect of the case before him. Had he ever thought he had been clever? The average person thought that to think of their past was terrible, but they didn't know that to see it play out in front of you was so much worse. 

Out of the corner of his vision, the sight-sucking void that walked in lockstep behind the young woman turned to face him.

The Medicine Seller walked on.

As he continued along the path and left the party behind, the world changed. The sky darkened, then lit again; the leaves on the ground drifted back to their branches to trees that welcomed them back, flew them brightly, then quietly curled them up and consumed them. In the distance, the estate at the end of the road remained unchanged, doors closed and lanterns unlit. 

He walked through months along the road, stars slowly spinning in their firmament above him, pinwheeling brightly as the moon alternated gravid and thin. 

He paused in the middle of an autumn evening, stars as bright and sharp as glass. Ahead of him, somebody died.

He suspected it was not a consolation to the victim that, from a strictly chronological point of view, no-one had died in that manner in a long time. The young woman from the square stood at the gateway to the estate, tears and violence on her face. Far away from this, in a room that contained many books but little common sense, the young man from the square was pricking up his ears and scrambling for devices of divination.

Over the body, the unseen thing raised its head and watched the Medicine Seller continue down the road.

The girl moved backwards as he moved forwards. The Medicine Seller did not look back to see it happen, but was soon overtaken by a man running backwards, restored from the gore of the road. On the other side of the estate's great gate the girl and the man wound back in different directions, he from the household and her from the kennels. The Medicine Seller followed in the man's reversed footsteps.

It was a small tragedy, no less terrible for its size. The cast: the master of the estate and his wife, in the front room of the house. Enter a fisherman, unlucky at both fishing and dice, but not with his filleting knife. Exit jewellery, money, a sword from the master's previous life. From the distance came the reversed mourning howls of the dogs, penned up too far from their master.

The estate sprung back into life around him as he walked through the house. Doors opened to catch spring breezes and shut against the wet winter gusts that blew off of the sea. Lanterns lit at night. The family did the things that families did, he supposed, small domestic moments packed with their strata of unique and impenetrable layers: anger and resentment, guilt and pride, joy and love, all bound up in shared experiences. The girl grew smaller and smaller, which was expected, but as he walked further and further down her past, dark circles under her eyes sprouted and unfurled like moth wings. In the corner of every room he walked through, the thing turned its unseeable face towards him.

By the time that he reached the back entrance, slid open to catch the sunset, the girl and her drawn face had disappeared altogether, the sliding doors to her bedchamber resolutely shut. The master of the house passed him, headed towards the village, a cloth-wrapped bundle in his hands and a shovel-bearing servant in tow.

He walked down the narrow winding path to the garden, enclosed by hedges and thickly-blossoming trees. Fish swum backwards under the surface of their pond, rising to gape at the fallen petals that swirled on the water. Far away from flowers and ponds, his younger self learnt how to do things, which was one thing, and was told when to do them, which was another.

On the edge of a clearing, carefully secluded from the world by camellias and osmanthus, the master swung his sword. The man had been a warrior, once. The cut he made was clean. Aside from the rush of the wind through the branches and the faint splash of fish, the only noise was a muffled thump, terrible in its quietness, and the clatter of the servant kicking aside a bowl, now no longer needed. 

When he had first visited the island he had decided that the murder of the thief was the start of things, but here, tucked away by screens of flowers and time, was another. And here was the benefit of experience: he knew that yet one more remained. Tucked away at the end of the yard, behind the small scene and the black smear of blood on the grass, was the kennels.

The girl ran across the grass, as gleeful as only small children and animals could be. Behind her followed the creature, still as removed from his view as if someone had taken the edges of his vision and pinched them together over the sight of it. There was time there between her and it, small childhood years, the sort that were incredibly important and utterly insignificant at the same time.

The open door of the kennels waited for him.

Surrounded by hay bedding and the warm smell of dogs, the master of the house took his daughter's fat little hands and in them placed a tiny wriggling creature, eyes sealed shut and still damp from its mother's first care.

"He will take care of you," he said gravely, as the little thing nosed at her fingertips for milk. "More than any other dog. But you'll have to be brave to keep him with you."

The girl cupped her hands around the thing, marvelling at its heartbeat, its tiny bones, its new puppy smell. She broke into a smile. "I'll be brave. He's gonna be mine forever, and we'll have adventures together, and look after each other, and I'm gonna call him--"

The kennels didn't have a rear door. There was one, anyway, as if cut out of the wall. The Medicine Seller stepped through it. 

Outside was a world half-leached of colour. The clear spring sky was grey-blue, and the clouds scuttling across it were as yellow as daisies. Grey grass swayed in the breeze, tiny flowers an indistinguishable monochrome ash. When he turned there was nothing behind him but sky and grass, stretching to forever. 

He sat down in the shade of a grey-barked tree, yolk-yellow leaves swaying in the breeze. When he opened his eyes there was a bright white shape padding towards him on oversized paws.

"Ah. Forgive me for not returning sooner, will you?" He leant his chin in his hand. "Many things become important when you're trying to avoid fixing a mistake, and there's rarely a mistake as terrible as your first."

The dog sat by him and lolled out its bone-white tongue.

"I didn't bother to wait, back then. There was a murder, a monster. These things seemed so clear-cut on paper. Shall I finally say what I should have said all those years ago?

"Your truth: you were created and bound to serve and protect your mistress. Your form: _inugami_. But you had no regret until I came along, thinking to save-- you? Her? Everyone, perhaps-- from the latter by destroying the former."

The dog looked at him with its glass-clear eyes. The Medicine Seller reached out an arm and stroked his knuckles softly against its colourless fur. "You have been wandering this place for a long time, now." 

The dog settled itself down in the grass with a quiet canine exhalation, head resting on its paws. Its breath ghosted over his feet. He ran a palm over its head, brushing over its ears.

"Go to your mistress," he said, as his sword snapped its teeth in its scabbard, "and forgive me."

 

It was another day, in another place. A son clenched his fists in the bloodied shirt of his father, fox-fire still lingering in the air, and yelled, messy and hoarse, "You could have stopped it sooner!"

"No," the Medicine Seller said, and sheathed the sword. "I couldn't have."


End file.
